Eagle Forum Legislative Alerts

Monday, January 07, 2013

The Republican strategists who confidently predicted that their candidate, Mitt Romney, would win the 2012 election are already pontificating about what Republicans must do to win in 2016. After their disastrous defeat, policy mistakes, and expensive super PAC advertising that failed to win votes, why should anybody take their advice again? The elitists now tell us that amnesty for illegal aliens, usually called "immigration reform," is the key to future Republican victories. That's wrong-headed advice.

Barack Obama sealed his victory in the battleground states: Ohio, Wisconsin, Virginia, and New Hampshire, but those states have very few Hispanics, and illegal immigration was not a significant issue there. Obama won narrowly in Florida, but the Hispanic vote there is Cuban and Puerto Rican and they don't care about immigration laws. Most polls show that Romney's pro-enforcement policies were more popular than Obama's pro-amnesty views. In regard to the entry of illegal aliens, a CBS poll found that 63% of voters believe that Arizona's immigration enforcement laws are either "about right" or "didn't go far enough."

The notion that the main reason Hispanics vote Democratic is their support of amnesty for illegal aliens and their resentment against Republicans who oppose it is a big political lie. The reason Hispanics vote Democratic is that two-thirds of Mexican immigrant families, although they are hard workers, are in or near poverty and 57% use at least one welfare program. That's twice the rate of native-born non-Hispanic households. That's not a constituency for whom promises of amnesty for more poor immigrants will persuade them to vote Republican. The elitists are trying to wrap their fallacious argument in Ronald Reagan, but that won't wash. After Reagan signed his famous amnesty, only 30% of the Latino vote went to Republicans.